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Anger, Anxiety and Agency

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Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#31

Post by hankbond »

Aeolun wrote: post #4

I think right now I love my job. I can work 5 times faster and explore all the little things that I never had time for. All my side projects suddenly come to fruition! But I have never been more anxious. I have a hard time sleeping, I constantly feel the need to keep up or fall behind. It didn’t use to be like this.

> I have a hard time sleeping, I constantly feel the need to keep up or fall behind

I felt this way very recently about the one projects I am focusing on. I kept seeing others explore the same space already ahead of me. I thought I'll never make it here because why use my thing when you can already use those things?

There was this extreme sense of urgency, as if I needed to do nothing else in my life but finish this project and get it out there. One day it hit me, and then over the course of a few weeks it settled in, that I was thinking of this from a place of extrinsic motivation. Basically, I was not doing what I wanted, I was doing what I thought others would want from me.

The project now has only two goals.

1. Build the project I want to use for myself, but in a way that will benefit others who happen to want the same thing.

2. The outcome of the project is not the code/app, it's a "changed Me", having learned everything I needed to to build the project.

Eventually I want the project to have a hosted paid platform version. I am not making this platform because I want to make money (I do, but that's besides the point). I am making this platform because I want experience in doing the types of things that can make money.

The whole thing now has become internally oriented in a way that allows me to no longer feel time pressure or be outcome oriented.

I went from feeling burned out spending all my time on this (I shed all other hobbies and activities), to having a great time spending all my time on this. The same amount of time/effort now feels indefinitely sustainable.

Framing is really one of the most powerful methods of emotional regulation. Whatever you are doing, make it relaxed and fun!

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#32

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. It's a reaction -a defensive surge of adrenaline, binary thinking, and motivation to fight. It can feel empowering and energizing. We aren't just sitting here. We're gonna do something.

The emotion is fear. Anger is just a reaction to fear. Basically, if we are angry, we are also scared; whether or not we want to admit it.

It's a long topic, and one I know well (I agree with the above summary), but I really don't think that discussing it, would be particularly welcome, here. I know that it isn't often welcome, even with folks that ask to hear it.

I've spent the majority of my adult life, learning to curb and sideline anger. In my experience, my anger has always caused problems. It has never solved a problem.

Ever. Not even one single problem.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

It's just drained my energy, stunted my reasoning, and poisoned relationships. It has caused others to strike back at me, when they didn't need to (which, of course, caused me damage), it has caused problems, where none existed before, and magnified existing ones.

We can't help getting angry, but we sure can help staying angry. That "staying" part is the corrosive agent. Anger is meant to be a temporary burst of energy, to deal with a threat. After the threat has (or has not) been dealt with, anger is supposed to dissipate. It's not supposed to be an "at rest" state (unless you're Bruce Banner).

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#33

Post by neom »

IHLayman wrote: post #16

Wait wait wait. I don’t accept this premise: “But anger is different from anxiety because anger needs to be directed somewhere.” Citation needed; where did this come from? I think it is very possible to be angry without a source or obvious target of that anger; IANAP but my 10-minute googles could not find any authority in the field that would claim this statement. From the perspective of the article, it seems that n…

Anger is strongly associated with certainty and perceived control, whereas anxiety/fear is much more associated with uncertainty and low control - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7059206/

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#34

Post by tolerance »

jjulius wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #18

The record scratch for me here was the idea that people can choose to be unsure instead of angry. People hate being unsure. Neurochemistry prefers anger to uncertainty. People get angry about being unsure. We feel anger in large part as our brain's natural salve for the discomfort of uncertainty. The suggestion he's making sort of defines away human nature. (There's a lot of practical benefit to be gained from unders…

Perhaps it doesn't come naturally for others and is therefore a bit of a struggle to shift into, but I love being unsure. It's great. It's a thing that's totally okay to be . The reality of life is that we're all unsure about a great deal, and it's quite a nice feeling to acknowledge uncertainty, sit within it and feel okay.

People typically do not approach existential uncertainties with such intrepidness. I think this is the case for most people who hate AI. This article glosses over that.

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#35

Post by jjulius »

tolerance wrote: post #34
jjulius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it doesn't come naturally for others and is therefore a bit of a struggle to shift into, but I love being unsure. It's great. It's a thing that's totally okay to be . The reality of life is that we're all unsure about a great deal, and it's quite a nice feeling to acknowledge uncertainty, sit within it and feel okay.

People typically do not approach existential uncertainties with such intrepidness. I think this is the case for most people who hate AI. This article glosses over that.

I suppose I am one of the people who could technically be lumped into the "hate AI" category, and yet I find myself incredibly comfortable with the uncertainty around where things are going. Perhaps it's because, as I previously mentioned, I have always enjoyed the feeling of uncertainty (and I recognize that's not the norm for most), but it's also because the entire thing feels so hyperbolic from all angles that I can't help but assume that whatever happens will be somewhere "in the middle" of all the rhetoric everyone's spouting from everywhere.

I also have a very, "The world's gonna do what the world's gonna do, the best I can do is find my path through and flow with it," attitude about, well... most things. Maybe that helps? Maybe I'm talking out of my ass rn? I'm unsure! :)

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#36

Post by burningChrome »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #5

> Even if you don’t find what’s happening right now exciting, you can at least find it interesting I can't get myself to stop finding it terrifying When I think about my future I am scared . Not uncertain. Not merely anxious. Definitely not excited. I'm quite frightened. In fairness, I think I'm a bit of an outlier. I already felt my place in society was fairly tenuous. I struggle to make friends. I don't feel I fit…

>> In fairness, I think I'm a bit of an outlier.

Not at all. I'm in the same boat. The first ten year of being a developer you could see things happening miles away. There was a predictable process. Someone builds a new framework. You do some tutorials, kick the tires. Then it eventually starts showing up in small corp projects, then bigger projects or its dropped in favor of a newer framework, app, platform.

Now? Its all gas no brakes. Just shove AI into everything. No vetting, no testing, just shove it into everything and see what happens. This is not software development to me - this is sprinting towards a brick wall.

I would recommend the same thing I'm doing. Branch out, network like crazy. Talk to people about your skills and see if what else is out there. Look at going into adjacent fields, etc. When I went through the first dot com bust and then the 08' crash? The only thing that saved me was networking. I had a few friends that I was talking to who were getting me interviews and telling me about openings that weren't being published.

Keep your shoulder to the wind and keep pushing, there's light at the end of this, I just don't know how long the tunnel is.

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#37

Post by dgellow »

Aeolun wrote: post #4

I think right now I love my job. I can work 5 times faster and explore all the little things that I never had time for. All my side projects suddenly come to fruition! But I have never been more anxious. I have a hard time sleeping, I constantly feel the need to keep up or fall behind. It didn’t use to be like this.

What does falling behind mean for you? What happens if you’re not keeping up? In my personal experience, nothing actually bad happen when you take your time to do your work without feeling the need to always follow the latest trends

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#38

Post by Insanity »

tptacek wrote: post #20
strken wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're redirecting an increasingly large portion of the world's R&D funding into building data centres to run LLMs which can barely speak English ("Good observation - that's the pivot point. I'll land the load bearing backstop.") and which turn what should be 100 lines of code into 4000. The end result for me has been that I am now a gatekeeper trying to prevent AI slop making its way into systems which I care about,…

LLMs write samey English that is of significantly higher quality than the median literate native speaker. There's a difference between obnoxious writing and bad writing, and when you claim LLMs can "barely speak English" you've run off the rhetorical cliff of your argument.

I think what the parent poster is getting at is that "LLMs don't sound natural". People don't write the same way an LLM does, which leads to a kind of 'uncanny valley' effect when reading AI text.

Over time, I suspect both human and AI writing will 'converge'. Humans are good at adopting/imitating language from a variety of sources, so I won't be surprised when we start using "load-bearing" in conversation. Simultaneously, LLMs will start sounding more natural.

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#39

Post by tptacek »

Insanity wrote: post #38
tptacek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs write samey English that is of significantly higher quality than the median literate native speaker. There's a difference between obnoxious writing and bad writing, and when you claim LLMs can "barely speak English" you've run off the rhetorical cliff of your argument.

I think what the parent poster is getting at is that "LLMs don't sound natural". People don't write the same way an LLM does, which leads to a kind of 'uncanny valley' effect when reading AI text. Over time, I suspect both human and AI writing will 'converge'. Humans are good at adopting/imitating language from a variety of sources, so I won't be surprised when we start using "load-bearing" in conversation. Simultane…

That's in fact not what they said, though.

Re: Anger, Anxiety and Agency

#40

Post by BeetleB »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32

I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. It's a reaction -a defensive surge of adrenaline, binary thinking, and motivation to fight. It can feel empowering and energizing. We aren't just sitting here. We're gonna do something . The emotion is fear. Anger is just a reaction to fear. Basically, if we are angry, we are also scared; whether or not we want to admit it. It's a long topic, and one I know well (I agree with…

> I was taught that anger isn't an emotion.

Yes, this is a school of thought I've seen in a few communication circles. It's not entirely accurate, but it's a useful exercise. They teach that anger is really a derived emotion, and is a result of a fundamental emotion, coupled with a narrative in your mind. The fundamental emotion is the real one, and the narrative in your mind maybe inaccurate. As a result, when you're angry, examine that narrative and ask: "Is this the only narrative that fits the data points?"

There have been occasions where I felt instant anger as a result of a stimulus, and there really wasn't a narrative behind it.

But those are the exceptions. In well over 95% of the cases, it is a derived emotion.

Related: A lot of people really seem hardwired to blame. When something goes wrong (at work, in their life, wherever), they seem to be incomplete if they can't find someone to blame. They often refuse to accept that "Accidents can happen."

Separating the act of "solving a problem" from the act of "blaming someone" was something I learned early in my career. It's useful to know which people you work with are those who can't distinguish.

Pro tip: Never work for a manager whose first question when something goes wrong is "Who owns this?" It's OK to get there eventually, but not the first impulse.

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